AsiaIn the News: Bush's passage to India President Bush's trip to India this week underscores the country's ever-growing importance in world affairs. These articles from the Quarterly's 2005 special edition "Fulfilling India's promise" offer the Indian Prime Minister's views on the development of his country, as well as a look at India's current economic conditions.

Limited-time special access: Normally reserved for premium members, "Checking India's vital signs" is available to all site members until March 7. Read it for free this week only, and spread the word to your colleagues.

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In 2004, US patent office granted a patent on a sequence of 26 asanas to an Indian-American yogapractitioner. You might wonder or express disbelief.How could anyone claim ownership over a 5,000-year-oldtradition? But, unfortunately that is the state of affairs in the world today.

Actually this is not a single such case. For example,80% of 5,000 patents on plant-based formulationsgranted by the US in 2000 were of Indian origin.

rajput was humiliated by the UPA govt, which refused to allow him to collect the UN award. all awards, esp magsaysay, are reserved for marxists and fellow travelers.

forecast: next year's magsaysay will go to teesta setalvad, who so successfully manipulated the indian legal system. she will keep on suing until she wins, with a little monkey business on the side.

---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Ra

Education shorn of values

It's that time of the year when children leave the school system. By the Indian reality, most will never enter the portals of an educational institution again. JS Rajput feels for the new batch of rootless creatures released by the educational system

There are occasions when one wonders why people the world over still admire India for its past contributions to the growth of civilisation and the evolution of thought. How could Indians achieve such spiritual insights that have eternal relevance on the time scale of history? This puzzle now has a contemporary context.

The aura and influence of India in the ancient world was not confined to the shores of India alone. The invaders and the conquerors did retard the progress of India's search for knowledge and the quest for understanding what lies beyond this world. The systems of generating, disseminating and utilising information and knowledge were relegated to the background for obvious reasons.

Yet, we managed to become the world's most illiterate nation. There can be no more comprehensive articulation of the distressing state of education in India than the famous words of Mahatma Gandhi, delivered at Chatham lines, London, on October 20, 1931: "I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully, that today India is more illiterate than it was 50 years ago or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of the things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished."

A couple of points that emerged in the scrutiny of the educational records, prepared and authenticated by the British officers between 1813 and 1830 established that almost every village had a school. GL. Pendergast, a senior British officer, wrote about the Presidency of Bombay around 1920: "There is hardly a village great or small throughout our territories, in which there is not at least one school; in larger villages, more."

Several such details have been unearthed from the records and indicate the existence of a widespread educational network extending to higher education in various disciplines. Supported entirely by charity and funding from the rulers of the area, these had more than 800 per cent students from what are classified as the lower strata of the society. Poverty or social status never debarred a young learner.

The British began a process of dispossession, ensuring that the revenue sources to the educational institutions got dried up. The collector of Bellary, in his report on indigenous education wrote :"In many villages where formerly there were schools, there are now none." This indicates how the system was allowed to whither away. It's inner strength, combined with India's collective indomitable spirit, however, helped it maintain a semblance of continuity.

Education and literacy relate to every aspect of human life. It applies to both the lettered and the unlettered. In the current context, there is hardly any need to reiterate the importance of education which is good in quality and acceptable in its content, apart from being envisioned as of relevance and utility by the individual and his larger society.

It's natural for people everywhere to be concerned about education and the systems that administer and mange it in their locale. This valid concern extends to the content and process of education, which have to respond to the ever-changing needs and requirements of their society and, hence, have to change simultaneously. Education helps people to learn and know who they are. It acquaints people with their roots, traditions, culture and the systems of learning and knowing. It augments their relationship to their heritage, gives them a sense of achievement and opens new vistas before them.

Every Indian is an inheritor of that powerful ancient heritage that attracts even the most modern-minded young person from every corner of the globe in search of peace, spirituality and in locating the real meaning of life and living.

Growth and evolution of cultures rarely follow linear paths. By the end of the 20th century, it was clear to everyone that the colonial era had damaged the cultural and educational context of hundreds of nations who were materially exploited for centuries.

They needed their own futuristic education systems in place of the transplanted models forced upon them by their alien rulers.

UNESCO now accepts that education in every country must be "rooted to culture and committed progress". Unfortunately, in India, the very usage of terms like "Ancient Indian culture", "Civilisation", "Vedanta", "Sanskrit", etc., makes our Marxist intellectuals squirm. Character assasination, the most potent weapon in their armoury, is thrown in to action: the canard of "Saffronisation".

In his Presidential address for the 1921 session of the Indian National Congress (sadly, it could not be delivered but was taken as read), Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das wrote: "Who can contemplate with equanimity that every year many crores of rupees go out of India without corres-ponding advantage? Morally, we are becoming a nation of slaves, and have acquired most vices of the slaves, we speak the language of the master, and ape his manners, and we rush with alacrity to adopt his institutions, while our own lie languishing in the villages. Intellectually, we have become willing victims to the imposition of foreign culture on us; and the humiliation is complete when we are deliberately breaking away from the past, recognising no virtue in its continuity".

Even after eight decades, this paragraph has relevance. It should be read and understood in word and spirit by those who have inherited the legacy of the great Indian National Congress of the pre-Independence era. It also must be realised that these people, now in power with Left support, are becoming willing partners in the designs of their supporters to cut off India's new generation from its glorious heritage and legacy.

The leaders of the freedom struggle considered the issue of educational change in India with great anticipation and commitment. All of us are familiar with "Basic Education" (Buniyadi Talim) formulation of Gandhi, Zakir Hussain and others. Chakravarty Rajagopalachari expressed serous doubts on what would happen to India when the generation that was in schools in 1950 took over the reins.His concerns arose out of the fact that the young ones were being imparted only "materialistic values", and were totally cut off from their Indian roots. One could cite several reports, resolutions, documents and deliberations emphasising the need to link the Indian education system to the Indian value ethos.thought and intellect. But vested interests resisted it successfully and are still going strong after it.

How does a vocal minority group of Indian intellectuals manage to garner so much publicity in its campaign against Indian culture and heritage? This can be understood if one recalls Kulpati Munshi's reflections on his college days in the early years of the 20th century. He recalled: "I was in the college and came under the influence of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. Like some of you, we thought ourselves 'progressives' only when we looked down on our ancient heritage, and looked up to whatever came from the West. Even our great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, about which we knew quiet a lot from our childhood, came into disrepute with us. The Mission houses, through their little books, told us that those of us who drew sustenance from these epics were no better than savages!"

KM Munshi was an exception. He raised a question to himself: "How was it that Indian culture had survived when so many ancient cultures in History had withered away? How was it that the vitality of Indian culture had continued through the ages despite historical vicissitudes?"

Who cares about the Policy and the manner in which it is changed? Otherwise how can those who swear by the name of Rajiv Gandhi become a party to the violation of the National Policy of Education-1986 (NPE-86), which was one of his most progressive and visionary contributions? Half a page specifically devoted to value education in Rajiv's Education Policy vanished totally from the 2005 "prescriptions", which deliberately avoid focus on value-based education. NPE-1986 had emphasised the need for research in Indology, the search of the country's treasure of ancient knowledge and relating that knowledge to the modern reality. All this stands totally wiped out.

(The writer, a former Director of NCERT, is recipient of UNESCO's highest honour in the field of education, the Jan Comenius Medal for 2004)

"... ... ... ... The final case, reported Thursday by an English-language daily, The Indian Express, involved a biologist, P. C. Caravan, who said he had been told his visa application would be delayed. A scientist affiliated with the M. S. Swami Nathan Research Foundation, Dr. Caravan told the newspaper he had been asked for his "entire biographical sketch" by the consulate in Chennai. The paper quoted him as calling it a "most demeaning and humiliating experience." "He could not be reached Thursday for further details."

========================================

If you don't know already, "Caravan" is actually Kesavan.

The story is written by Somini Sengupta, undoubtedly a Bengalee. I thought it was only Hindi-speaking people in India that would mutilate south-Indian names.

in particular pay attention to steve farmer's peccadilloes. no wonder he comes across so poorly -- he's a brain-dead creationist, and proud of it too.

farmer in a recent paper argued that the indus-sarasvati writings do not constitute a language. i agree with him. the cryptic symbols are -- what else -- the tourist visas given to the 'tall, handsome, blue-eyed, blond' 'aryans' so they could arrive in india, be language teachers, marry local women, and sow some 'aryan' wild oats (aka genes) around! so now we have all the evidence for the Aryan Tourist Theory (TM)! QED.

In an email to a mailing list consisting of Communists, Kaleem Kawaja, a Muslim leader and author of the infamous article 'Brother, can you spare a tear for Taliban,' praised the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas for retaining a 'secular ethos' and having a record of social service and clean politics. He elucidated on the Religion of Peace:

I hope Hamas, while retaining Islam for themselves and Muslim Palestinians, will make enough efforts to keep the Palestinian national movement, PLO and the Palestinian Authority genuinely secular and will give real equal space to Christian Palestinians. I hope they will appreciate the fact that Islam respects Christianity as a religion of the Book, and Christians as People of the Book.

Those who would see "a new proposition for European man" in the last part of this thesis should first note well God's words to man in Genesis 1:28: "And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

On page 317 of the same dissertation (essentially a string of quotes and paraphrases of the works of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola and some others who have written about him, similar to the project reports submitted by eight grade social studies students in India), he laments his inability to reconstruct answers to more involved questions:

We cannot, unfortunately, reconstruct the more complicated arguments, perhaps involving detailed numerical calculations, which Pico planned to use in answering more involved questions, such as determining the date of the end of the world.

On how the world was created (page 351):

Since God created the world through the powers of language, we might picture the Magus too directly . . .

We have a solution for the crisis caused by the violent Islamic reaction to the publication of a few cartoons in a Danish newspaper. The Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, should listen to his own advice.

. . . the Danish Prime Minister and E.U. President, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, when asked why there was no reference to Kashmir in the agreed text, said: "To be honest and frank, we did not agree on a text. But I would like to... urge all parties in this conflict to find a peaceful solution... we did not think it would facilitate further progress to write a text." ... An aggressive Mr. Rasmussen said at least on three occasions at the press conference that India should talk to Pakistan.

We urge all parties in this conflict to find a peaceful solution. We suggest Denmark enter into talks with the jihadists.

Prof. Madhav Deshpande of the University of Michigan, who claimed that his family members worship both Shiva and Vishnu, claimed that the name of "god Shiva" was banned from their house and women in his family used to scrub floors with vertical motions of their hands, rather than sideways, as that resembled the Shaivite marks on the forehead! Strange way to worship both Shiva and Vishnu.

The author of the article raises an interesting question:

I have never heard of this wild allegation that Madhva Vaishnava women scrubbed floors in vertical motion, which would have required a conscious effort against the basic laws of Physics, given the fact that Indian women scrub floors in a squatting position.

Here is more from "Asst. to the Professor" Steve Farmer's PhD thesis - two is an evil number!

Jerome tells us that the number two is an "evil" number, a fact he uses to explain why on the second day of Creation we are not told "And God saw that it was good." In the properties of this malevolent number Jerome also . . .

Did Gandhi utter the words 'Hey Ram' when he was shot? His personal assistant says 'No' and we won't question him, but here is a report on the last words of the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan when he was shot:

A photographer who had stood close by the dais said that Liaqat Ali's last words were of the Arabic quotation, "There is no God but One, and Mohammad is his Prophet."

IRFAN announces a reward of $10,000 for the first person who can prove that indologists are idiots. The rules? No forgery allowed, and if you prove the indologists to be idiots, you will be accused of forgery. The judges will be the indologists in question!

South Asian Bleeding Hearts Association welcomes comments, suggestions and leads for items published here. Please send your comments to feedback@sabha.info. If you wish to unsubscribe, or you have been forwarded this mail and would like to subscribe, click here.

In December 1998, comedian Johnny Lever was sentenced to seven days of imprisonment by Additional Metropolitan Magistrate of Mumbai underSection 2 of Prevention of Insult's to National Honour Act for caricaturingthe national anthem and the Indian Constitution at a private function in Hyat Regency Hotel of Dubai in 1990.

Sleuths of Intelligence Bureau were entrusted the task of recoveringhis performance's videotape, which was then presented to the court asevidence. The Johnny Lever episode was recently refreshed in public memory after a private channel recently showed a video recording of Bollywood starsperforming at the wedding of Dawood Ibrahim's nephew.

Contrast this with the universal condemnation in the country ofProphet Mohammed's cartoons but dodging the issue of MF Husain's obscene painting of ' Bharat Mata'. Old-fox Husain has gone beyond his limits ofdenigrating Hindu gods and goddess; and in the process demeaning India . Youdo not need to engage any IB sleuth to procure a graphic evidence from beyond borders to prove this. Then why should there be one standard forJohnny Lever and another for MF Husain? Nor is protecting the honour ofIndia the sole responsibility of the BJP or the Sangh Parivar.

Do not the so-called secularists from Congress sing 'Vande Mataram' -the hymn in the honour of Mother India and our national song - at AICCsessions? How can they sing paeans to Mother India and tolerate its 'graphic vilification' at the same time ? If defending 'Mother India' becomes an actof 'Hindu communalism' today, then we are not far from 'Pakistanisation' ofthe country!

Last Monday BJP's Ravi Shankar Prasad raised the twin issues of Prophet's Mohammed's cartoons and Husain's painting portraying 'Bharat-Mata'in Rajya Sabha during zero hour. But Parliamentary Affairs Minister SureshPachouri of the Congress, while explicitly condemning the Prophet's cartoons, did not mention Husain. It forced me and other Rajya Sabha membersof the BJP to rush to the well of the House and demand unanimouscondemnation of Husain as well.

Only persistent shouting of 'Bharat mata ki jai' for about 15 minutes could elicit a specific condemnation of the painter. Is it credible for theIndian Parliament to unequivocally condemn insult to Prophet Mohammed butmaintain silence on the insult to Bharat mata, let alone Hindu deities?

After the Gujarat riots, some 'secularists' were suddenly reminded ofKashmiri Hindus languishing in camps for over a decade, only to show thatthey were not partial while sympathising with Muslim riot-victims huddled in camps in Ahmedabad. Had Gujarat tragedy not occurred, they have would noteven paid lip-service to Kashmir. Had the cartoon controversy not erupted,the 'secularists' would have been happy to support Husain's right to freedom of expression as they have been doing so in the past.

India I am afraid, is turning into a camp following Islam's jihad forworld conquest. Our 'secularists' are behaving like stewards who used tofollow Aurangzeb in his jihadi campaigns. Demographically, India forms the lone significant hurdle between two concentrations of Islam in West-CentralAsia and South-East Asia (Indonesia, world's largest Muslim country). We areflanked by two regions with the largest concentration of Muslim population on our immediate left and right. If India goes down, the caliphate is acertainty, for whose establishment Islamists all over the world are workingovertime.

If Indians - or Hindus - succumb to this Islamic pressure, then our civilisation runs the risk of collapsing. It might appear surprising thatMuslim protest rallies in Hyderabad, Muzafarnagar, and Lucknow againstProphet's cartoons published in European dailies should lead to looting of Hindu shops, stoning Hindus, shouting slogans against Hindu deities andransacking the BJP office.

No Indian newspaper has published or rather dared to publish thecartoons. Even then why have the Hindus been at the end of Islamic ire? It is because to Islam one kafir (non-Muslim) is as good as another. This wasproved during the Solapur riots in Maharashtra in 2002. A critical commenton Prophet Mohammed by American evangelist Jerry Falwell led Muslims of Solapur to vent their ire upon Hindus.

But is this not what happened in Mopla riots (1920)? BR Ambedkar inhis book Pakistan or The Partition of India says, "The outbreak wasessentially a rebellion against the British Government. The aim was to reestablish the kingdom of Islam by overthrowing the British government...Asa rebellion against the British Government it was quite understandable. Butwhat baffled most was the treatment accorded by the Mopla to Hindus of Malabar.

The Hindus were visited by a dire fate at the hands of Moplas.Massacres, forcible conversions, desecration of temples, foul outrages uponwomen, such as ripping of pregnant women, pillage, arson and destruction-in short, all the accompaniments of brutal and unrestrained barbarism, wereperpetrated freely by the Moplas upon the Hindus .

Islamic behaviour is atavistic. Thus, I was not surprised when UttarPradesh Minority Welfare Minister Hajji Yakoob Qureshi put a price of Rs 51 crore (plus incentive in gold) on the heads of Danish cartoonists. Refusingto acknowledge it as 'supari' (contract killing money, as BJP's Lalji Tandondescribed it) he defended his decision, on a private television news channel, as deriving legitimacy from Islamic law. Or in other words, the UPMinister was implying, "damn your constitution, damn your law of the land, Irecognise only Islam."

One finds an analogy in another description by BR Ambedkar -"Nathuramal Sharma was murdered by Abdul Qayum in September, 1934.It was an act of great daring. For Sharma was stabbed to death in the Courtof the Judicial Commissioner of Sind where he was seated awaiting the hearing of his appeal against his conviction under Section 195, IPC, for thepublication of a pamphlet on the history of Islam...The leading Moslems,however, never condemned these criminals.

On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs and agitation was carried on for clemency being shown to them. As an illustration to thisattitude, one may refer to Mr Barkat Alli, a barrister of Lahore, who arguedthe appeal of Abdul Qayum. He went to the length of saying that Qayum was not guilty of murder of Nathuramal because his act was justifiable by thelaw of the Koran. This attitude of the Moslems is quite understandable. Whatis not understandable is the attitude of Mr Gandhi"

Thus when a senior member of All-India Muslim Personal Law BoardZafaryab Jilani defends Haji Yakub Qureshi's Rs 51-crore prize money orMaulana Mufti Abul Irfan issues a fatwa on behalf of two 'Sharia courts' Idara-e-Sharia Darul Qaza and Ifta Firangi Mahali Taksal of Lucknow it doesnot come as a surprise. They are revealing something important about 'Islam,the religion of peace, mercy and benevolence'. But what is not understandable is how 'secularists' are trivialising Haji Yakub Qureshi'sthreat that constitutes a cognisable offence under Indian Penal Code.

Samajwadi Party's Amar Singh looked ridiculous when he said Qureshi did not have enough money to foot Rs 51crore bill. UP Chief Secretary AlokSinha (his script apparently prepared by UP Chief Minister Mulayam SinghYadav) says that those cartoonists are not citizens/residents of India. The IPC makes no distinction between a citizen/resident of India or otherwise.It means the fatwa is acceptable; the quibble is only over money.

I fear US President George Bush, who is not a citizen/resident of India, may receive a prize on his head from Indian Muslim organisations.Will the Indian Government twiddle its finger over citizenship status ofGeorge Bush in such a scenario? It is heartening to learn that a criminal case against Haji Yaqoob has finally been filed in Ghaziabad. It proves weare yet not living in a land dictated by Sharia.

Thank you for calling Heisenberg Security; we are currently both in and out of the office: Looks like quantum cryptography is finally coming of age. University of Toronto professor Hoi-Kwong Lo says he's developed a commercially viable encryption technique that uses a photonic decoy to safeguard data . Based on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that merely observing a quantum object alters it, the technique uses photon keys to protect data. Intermingled with the data they encrypt, these keys become useless if they're observed by a third party (a la Heisenberg). "The principle is that if someone makes some measurement, or has some interaction (with the protecting photon), then its quantum state will change. If any eavesdropper tries to find out anything about the (photon keys), then the (quantum) orientation will change," Lo told The Toronto Star. "The eavesdropper has no idea about the polarization and if he tries to measure it, it will change. " Lo says the technique is nearly infallible. "We are using fundamental quantum mechanics principles that no eavesdropper can do anything about."

Blasphemy doesn't begin with caricatures of the Prophet nor does it end with lampooning Islam, says Kanchan Gupta

The violent protest by Muslims across the world against the publication of 12 caricatures of Prophet Mohammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is showing no indication of petering out. Regardless of abject apologies by Danish authorities and the attempt by some Muslim leaders to calm passions, each day brings its share of stories of Muslims going on the rampage and clerics encouraging the faithful to slaughter the cartoonists and reap rich rewards for the murders in both this and the other world.

While there has been no outpouring of support for those who have been attacking Danish diplomatic missions and burning that country's national flag, the flood of commiseration for hurt Muslim sentiments is truly awesome. Condemnation of the wilful attempt to mock the Prophet is entirely justified, as is the demand that those who decide media content should exercise greater caution in future.

There can, however, be no support for those Muslims who have been indulging in wanton violence -- looting of Hindu shops, as happened in Hyderabad after Friday prayer or the murder of a 60-year-old Catholic priest, Fr Andrea Santoro, in Turkey, apart from the torching of Danish missions -- nor should any legitimacy be accorded to the callfor killing the cartoonists -- Al Qaeda has announced a bounty of 100 kg of gold, a Pakistani cleric has offered $ 1 million and an animal fat trader who enjoys the exalted position of Minister for Minority Welfare in Uttar Pradesh has promised Rs 51 crore to those willing to murder in the name of Islam.

But those who are seeking to play a pro-active role in assuaging "hurt" Muslim sentiments, including the UPA Government which has preposterously conveyed a formal protest to Denmark, the Congress Government of Andhra Pradesh which has equally ludicrously dragooned the State Assembly into passing a resolution condemning the cartoons and what AP has described as "Muslim supporters of Hindu right wing nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party" burning the Danish national flag in a pathetic me-too-outraged response, are unwilling to accept that blasphemy does not begin with caricaturing Prophet Mohammad, nor does it end with lampooning Islam.

In 2002, Egyptian and other Arab television channels telecast a 41-part serial, A Knight Without a Horse, based on the spurious document called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a work of fiction produced in Russia in 1903 to incite and legitimise anti-Jewish pogroms. Under pressure from American Jews and the Government of Israel, the US lodged a half-hearted protest with the Egyptian Government and Arab regimes where the programme was telecast. Predictably, the 'protest' was ignored by both Arab palace and street. As if that were not enough, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, funded by liberal Governments in Europe and hailed as a symbol of secular knowledge, put on public display what it claimed to be an ancient copy of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion".

There was no outrage, not even a whimper of protest by secular Governments at this insidious attempt to legitimise anti-Semitism. Nobody dashed off letters of protest, nor were resolutions passed condemning this disgraceful incitement of anti-Jewish sentiments. On the contrary, the overwhelming sentiment, more so in Scandinavian countries, was that of "serves the Jews right".

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" owes its origin to anti-Semitism of early-20th century that paved the way for Adolf Hitler's gas chambers and the Holocaust. It purports to be a secret blueprint prepared by Zionists to establish Jewish control over the world. It is sufficient to incite the cruellest of passions among those who have been taught from childhood to hate Jews. It is as spurious as the Islamists' cockamamie claim that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy. It is as despicable as the sly inclusion of a photograph of a pig squealing contest, organised by farmers in rural France, in the inflammatory booklet that has been put out by clerics of Denmark to draw the ummah's attention to the caricatures of the Prophet.

But it is not Jews alone who have had to suffer anti-Semitism in silence with the liberal world refusing to condemn the hateful propaganda of Arabs and thus mollycoddling spiteful Muslims who make no effort to hide their contempt for the faith of others. Copts in Egypt dare not display the symbol of their faith or its substitute, a fish, because it would invite instant violent retribution. An Indian Hindu expatriate who died in Cairo and whose family did not have the resources to fly her body to India for cremation, had to consign the mortal remains to the flames of a garbage incinerator. Next day, local newspapers criticised the Government for allowing such pagan practices.

Elsewhere in Arabia, public display of any faith other than Islam is prohibited; violation of the law could lead to public decapitation. The hugely influential Sunni imam Youssef al-Qaradawi, who as a guest of London's Red mayor Ken Linvingstone praised suicide bombers at an official reception, runs a popular website which lists several fatwas justifying jihad against Hindus and Hinduism and encourages Muslims to join terror brigades to fight India's infidels.

In Iran, newspapers routinely organise competitions to caricature Jews and deride their faith. No Islamic country acknowledges the Holocaust which Muslim scholars wave away as Jewish propaganda.

Such blatant abuse, of course, has never invited the mildest criticism, nor have the hate-mongers been rebuked in a manner remotely similar to the reprimand to which Jyllands-Posten and the Danish cartoonists are now being subjected. Hate speech is illegal, as it should be, in most European countries, including Britain. But Muslims are spared from its purview on the specious plea that the hate they spew is integral to their faith.

Yes, this is ridiculous. But so is the move to impose a ban on Christmas, Santa, kissing in school plays, piggy banks and Winnie the Pooh because they "hurt" Muslim sentiments. As Daniel Pipes writes in one of his incisive articles, "The benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, instructed employees that all pig-related novelty items are henceforth banned from its offices, so as not to offend Muslim staff. This includes pig toys, porcelain figures, calendars, and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet."

The reason for such capitulation that has emboldened the tribe of Haji Yaqoob Qureshi can be found in Youssef al-Qaradawi's boastful claim, "We must tell Europeans, we can live without you. But you cannot live without us." He might as well have said the world can't live without being in thraldom of frightful Islamist retribution. For evidence, look at the violence that has been unleashed in the name of protesting against caricaturing the Prophet.

Visit http://www.Defendrussianhindus.Org and send protest letters to Mayor of Mascow and other authorities. Write to IE and other papers regardingthis struggle to create awareness. Please circulate this news amongfriends and colleagues.

dhanyavad,guru

source:Website against Hindu harassment in Russia

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

Posted online: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 at 0233 hours IST

LONDON, FEBRUARY 20: A Hindu group based in the UK has launched a websiteto coordinate worldwide communication on issues of alleged harassment of Russian Hindus by the nations' Orthodox Church and the government.

The website, www.Defendrussianhindus.Org, launched by the Defend RussianHindus Campaign here, includes history of the harassment, latest news about the campaign, press stories, presentations that can be downloaded,and pictures and documents and contact details for sending protestletters.

The campaign, launched at the House of Commons last month by parliamentarians and members of communities, gathered steam after certainobjectionable comments were allegedly made against a Hindu diety by theArchbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. Reportedly, he also urged the Moscow Mayor to stop construction of a Hindu temple there.

"There are over 60,000 Hindus in Russia with thousands of Indian andRussian origin (over 10,000) in Moscow alone. However, the peacefulcommunity is being denied simple right to have a place of worship where they can pray, counsel and celebrate their faith," said Ramesh Kallidai,Secretary General of the Hindu Forum of Britain.

Supporters of the campaign include Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, whorecently handed a letter of protest to the visiting Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. Minister for Europe Douglas Alexander has said that Britain willdiscuss the issue with Russia.

A motion in the House expressing concern about the harassment andextending support to the campaign has so far received support of 57 MPs.

Speaking on a PTV talk show, the moon-sighting chief of Pakistan Mufti Munibur Rehman warned "the NGOs and the Christians" as he took on the Musharraf government on the question of the Danish cartoons. The reference to the Christians was gratuitous and an indirect incentive to the anti-cartoon vandals to fall upon an already vulnerable community. What happened in Nigeria the same day should chasten him. Frenzied Nigerians killed at least 15 people and turned on the Christian minority in the northern city of Maiduguri, burning shops and churches. It has already been done in Pakistan and this kind of incitement can lead to another outrage.

Libya too killed 11 of its citizens as if in ritual suicide at the state level, then fired the interior minister as a fig-leaf gesture, even as the big leader Gaddafi was cheered by the fact that the Libyan killings had caused a right-wing Italian minister to resign for displaying a T-shirt he wore emblazoned with one of the offending Danish cartoons. A minister in India has offered millions of rupees as reward for anyone killing the Dane who drew the cartoons. The Congress government will soon correct his overkill. In all this, the good that the West was doing was ignored. The Norwegian Muslims kept saying in vain that they had resolved the issue amicably.

Like Pakistan, Nigeria simply needed a fuse. Both countries have other crises related to the nature of the state and its diminishing social contract. In addition, Nigeria is short on ethics and has set new records for corruption in public offices. Oil-rich but dysfunctional, Nigeria could hardly afford the Christian-killing riots. The Nigerian Islamists and Pakistan's Mufti Munib should have taken into consideration the condemnation of the cartoons issued by the Church. Other considerations, of course, are not yet crucial to the states convulsed with holy wrath: that finally the loss is the Muslims' and that in Europe expatriate Muslim communities will have to absorb most of the negative consequences of what they are allowing their citizens to do.

Nigeria has recent record of losing sanity. In November 2002, there was street violence for a week between Muslims and Christians in Kaduna that spread to the capital Abuja, killing 200. Following a fatwa of death, the country with a population of 120 million was brought to the brink of chaos. The parallel with Pakistan is stark, only Pakistan might have stolen the march on most unstable Islamic states by putting its head first on the chopping block in the current controversy. Constitutionally, Nigeria is a secular state with freedom of religion. For nearly 40 years, however, the northern ruling elite has given preferential treatment to Muslims and discriminated against Christians. Little has been done to stop persecution of Christians in the north with churches burnt and many Christians killed since 1999 when eight northern states imposed sharia and applied it to the Christians.

Over 70 percent of the population of the northwestern Nigerian provinces is Muslim, 13 percent Christian and 20 percent traditional. In the South there is a strong presence of the international Christian Church with funding from many European and American church authorities. In the North, a fresh impulse for Islamic transformation is coming from the Muslim countries in Africa and from extra-regional Saudi Arabia. Sudan has more influence than others because the Nigerian clergy is mostly trained in Sudan. Pakistani religious groups are also active. The breaking point was reached in 2001 resulting in bloodshed. After that Nigeria went back to business as usual, which is corruption. Nigeria is a member of the OIC and has already convictions under rijm (stoning to death) and blasphemy on its judicial record with people daily meting out rough justice to their non-Muslim victims.

Mufti Munib wants revenge against Europe but has no idea of what that would entail even if the OIC got together and decided on an oil embargo. Closing down embassies will hurt only Pakistani families travelling between Europe and homeland. The Muslim Diaspora in the West is already hurting. It is disappointed with what is happening in home countries and worried that such extremism can only strengthen extreme rightwing parties in their adopted countries. The racist fringe, they apprehend, is likely now to gain support for its demands for restrictions on immigrants in general and Muslims in particular.

Cutting off oil means deprivation of crucial revenues, about 80 percent of the total revenue in the OPEC states. If ever there was a lesson in 1973 it was that the oil-consuming West has the option of switching to non-oil sources of energy and that expensive oil will only hit the Islamic world where the economies are weak. Saying goodbye to common sense is not justified even under religious passions. Muslims have killed Muslims once again. And the West is not hurting much.

Pakistan is coming apart at the seams. There is violence on more than half its territory and cities are hanging on to law and order by the skin of their teeth. The religious parties see a chance. The clerics have been under pressure because their money-making madrassas could possibly be brought under state control leading directly to a diminution of their authority. They have now grasped the opportunity to pressure the government and make it back down. Others with jihadi militias and "student wings" under their command think that they can exploit the current bout of instability and take hold of the state after a coup that is bound to come if the tension doesn't subside. People like our moon-sighting mufti should know that commanding a militia travels well in Pakistan.

There is a frightening logic behind the technique adopted by the Muslims to make Europe regret its cartoons. TV talk shows in Pakistan have their hosts proudly asking: are the Europeans scared yet or not? Scared of what? The fact is that Europe is cringing at the spectacle of Muslims killing themselves, and the TV hosts know it. To them it no longer matters that this "fear" in the West is produced by a very doubtful technique of destroying the Islamic state and spilling Muslim blood. This is the power of the weak. This is inverted jihad. Mix it with misgovernment and corruption and you have the endgame. It is no longer the art of getting nowhere. It is in fact the process of going down. *

Kerala has always been a model to the world. While in earlier days it was social reformers like Adi Sankara, Sree Narayana Guru, etc. in modern times it is its predominance in education, health care, land reforms etc. Now Kerala is becoming a model for the wrong reasons— Communalisation and Islamisation of the education sector, thanks to the dominance of the Muslim League Ministers in this crucial portfolio.

Majority of the schools, colleges, B.Ed. Colleges, Medical and Engineering Colleges and Nursing institutions in North Kerala are under the control of Muslims. In addition to these thousands of madrasas are functioning in the State with funding from the state sponsored Wakf Board.

While last week it was the case of Muslim students of a Christian Management School being prevented from going on their annual excursion because the itenary consisted Churches, this week it is the case of a Muslim girl and her family facing social ostracism because she is learning Bharatanatyam and Keralanatanam. V.P. Rubiya, daughter of Alavikutty is a class 10 student at Morayur High School, Kondotty, Malappuram District. She started learning Bharatanatyam, traditional Kerala dances and folk dances out of burning desire to participate in the State School Arts Festival. The local Mosque ordered her to desist from this move. When Rubiya resisted and continued with her resolved, she and her family were subjected to ostracism. They were kept out of the Mosque and other Muslims were warned against dealing with them. They were denied the relief given during Ramzan. The parents fear that they may not be able to find a bridegroom for the girl since no imam will solemnise the wedding of a family ostracised by a mosque.

Undaunted by the threat and due to the support of her family and teachers, the girl participated in the festival and won prizes in the categories.

We have heard of books on Kathakali, Bharatanatyam and Indian Culture being confiscated and destroyed in Airports of Saudi Arabia, but what is happening in Kerala, a highly educated state, is shameful. Will the communists who shout from the roof-top against communalism wake up or will they shut their eyes in these days of vote-bank politics and elections.

After finding a wallet full of cash, belonging to a local troublemaker...

Namaste!

With the excitement of New Year past, most of us will have returned to the daily grind of our regular routines. Never mind, Hindu Voice UK is back to bring you some much-needed refreshment! New features in for February include Horoscopes by Acharya Surinder Gautama, updates to our Resources section and of course many new articles, stories, pictures and reviews. We wish all of our readers a happy Maha Shivratri for the 26th February.

Hindus around the world have expressed disgust at the use of Goddess Durga to promote Southern Comfort whiskey. Posters and models of Goddess Durga with bottles of Southern Comfort whiskey in each of her hands were first spotted by some Hindus living in Greece, at the 'Balon Oriental Bar' in Athens. They tried to get the bar to remove the images, but were refused and told to contact the whiskey company.

The mass outrage in the Muslim world against cartoon depictions of Mohammed has been dominating headlines for days on end. The cartoons were initially printed in the 30 September 2005 issue of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten after thn editor invited around forty different artists to give their interpretation on how Mohammed may have looked. Twelve artists responded. Read More...

Standing on a packed train on the way home from university, I was feeling terrible. It had been a hard week, I was annoyed with several colleagues, the train had been delayed and everybody nearby seemed to be coughing and sneezing on me! In the rush to get onto the train people were barging each other and getting into heated arguments. Read More...

The message left by the racist vandals is clear for all to see. 'Pakis Out' and 'BNP' - short for the racist British National Party, have been spray-painted across the shutters of the local corner shop. Read More...